The Apprentice
When Suki had been first summoned to the Guildmaster’s office, she had expected it to be another job. It was another job, just not the usual kind of job. “You may not know it, but you’re a natural at this,” the Guildmaster said, pacing back and forth behind his desk. “You only needed two jobs with Leroy holding your hand, and you were already having more success than most of the guys here.” He took a deep breath. “Girl, I have a favor to ask you.” That… was new. The Guildmaster was a man who kept tight control over everything. Within the Kidnapper’s Guild, and in many places outside of it, his word was law. He never asked for anything. He gave orders, and people followed them. He sometimes masked his orders as helpful suggestions, but that was only different wrapping on the same thing. He offered, he bargained, but he never asked, especially not for favors. “My sister,” the Guildmaster continued, “has called in a favor from me. My nephew has run into some problems back at home, and she wants to send him here to help keep him out of trouble.” “… and she sent him here?” Suki had trouble herself believing what she was hearing. The Kidnappers Guild was not exactly an organization in high standing with society as a whole. Nor was it known for producing and supporting fine and upstanding citizens. “My nephew is a very bright young man,” the Guildmaster explained. “He’s smart enough to know better than to go chasing after liquor, high stakes cards games, and noblemen’s daughters. But he has a problem knowing when to keep his mouth shut. This is especially problematic when one of his favorite hobbies is thinking up radical political theories.” He took a long deep breath. “People tend to take offense at being told a radical political theory. Especially our new queen from what I understand.” “What do you want me to do?” Suki sighed. “Keep my nephew out of trouble.” The Guildmaster stated. “A black eye or two is fine, should teach him to watch his tongue. But make sure he doesn’t go shooting off his mouth to some high noblewoman and gets the secret police on our backs. Teach him how to be a kidnapper and, heh, show him the ropes around here.” “I’m honored… I think.” The Guildmaster snorted. “Don’t worry about him, he’s not a bad lad. Just don’t get him started on trade ships, elven culture, fruit trees, or the monarchy.” _______________________________________________________________________________________ “I’m Jason, pleased to meet you.” The first thing Suki noticed about the Guildmaster’s nephew was that he was tall. While she was by no means short, the boy was at least a full head taller than her. He was also nothing like anything she expected a nephew of the Guildmaster to be. With a pair of glass perched on his nose, a green dyed longcoat, and an overstuffed bookbag, he looked exactly the part of some scholar from a middle-class family. Even the heavy iron club hanging from his belt didn’t detract from the image, as such weapons were favored as a means for protection by merchants and other traveling folk. “You’re not what I expected,” he admits, holding out a hand for her to shake. “What were you expecting?” she asks, reaching out to clasp hands. She’s not terribly surprised. She’s often found that she’s the last thing anyone expects a guild kidnapper to look like. Which has actually worked to her favor a few times. “A female version of Leroy,” he answers without hesitation. “I guess it was because Uncle said you were one of his best. No offense but you kind of look like you belong in as a princess in a palace.” She winces inside at how close he is to the mark. Even after this time, it’s still a sore spot. “Looks can be deceiving.” “Don’t I know it,” he laughs. “Anyway, Uncle said you were going to show me how things are done here?” She looks him up and down. He looks friendly enough. He’s definitely large enough to wrestle a bound, thrashing girl down a ladder. Maybe this won’t be so bad. “That’s right,” she replies. “We’ll start right now. Tell me, how are your knots?” _______________________________________________________________________________________ His knots, she quickly discovers, are terrible. They practically unite themselves. Jason is red in the face with embarrassment, as Carol practically sheds his ropework with a disappointed groan. Athena lets out a snort of mild amusement before going back to her drink. His second attempt is not much better. So Suki decides they’ll switch to combat. That goes only slightly better. Athena has him on his ass in five seconds. Suki has him out cold on the floor in under ten. Jason is strong, but he’s never been trained to fight. Suki has no doubt he could knock someone out cold with one blow from his heavy iron club. He just needs to be able to hit them first. But she’s not discouraged. She started out little better when she first broke herself out of her cell. When Jason finally comes to, she tries one more thing. Magic. Jason is supposed to be really smart, according to his uncle, and since magic has always required a certain degree of mental capabilities it’s worth a shot. This time it’s Suki who finds herself on the ground, her clothes smoldering, as she vomits onto the floor. Carol is sprawled out, fast asleep right next to her, her daggers scattered on the floor beside her. Athena is slumped, half-out of her chair, her entire body paralyzed except for her eyes, which are burning with anger. She’s never heard of a nausea spell before. But as she sits there puking her guts out, she can’t deny it is effective. It’s probably for the best, while she knows some spells, she is by no means a magician. There is likely nothing she could teach him that he doesn’t already know. Besides, not only can she focus her training on more important things now, but it will be nice to have a mage on the team. He’s not guild material yet, but it’s a start. _______________________________________________________________________________________ The best place to start is the basics. Therefor the first thing Suki sets out to do, is to improve Jason’s knots. It’s an uphill struggle. The first problem is that for whatever reason he has trouble remembering how to do the various knots. The second problem is that his knots seem to come undone unusually quickly and readily. It’s a rather big problem. Knots that don’t stay done up might as well not be knots at all. There’s nothing to be done but tedious repetition and practice. Tie the knot, test it, untie it, and then retie it again. It goes on until not only Jason and her are sick to death of knots, but also Carol and Athena as well. It’s ultimately worth it however, because it pays off. Jason finally, finally, starts tying knots that don’t come undone at the slightest jerk, and actually stand a chance of holding a struggling girl for hours. Then the fun part begins. Using the knots to actually tie someone up. First they start out with basic stuff. Namely tying up a victim that isn’t resisting. Carol is all too happy to play the victim in these cases, and slowly Jason starts to improve. Pretty soon Jason can securely tie down Carol, even when she fights back. So Suki decides to up the ante. Athena is still angry at Jason for the paralysis spell, and itching for an excuse to pound him for it. However she still charges Suki an exorbitant amount for “training fees” as she calls them. True to Suki’s predictions, Athena still pounds Jason into the ground, giving him bruises that take a month to disappear. The next fight goes little better, but that is to be expected. Unlike Carol, Athena is a professional mercenary. Fighting is her business, and she is good at it. Nonetheless, like with his knots, Jason improves. It’s actually a major milestone, worthy of celebration, when Jason finally manages to get the drop on Athena and finally manages to tie her up. True, he did somehow manage to tie himself to her in the process, resulting in a massive tangle of awkwardly located limbs. Regardless, both Suki and Carrol think the moment is worth both cheers and merciless laughter. Jason and Athena disagree. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Now that Jason can tie knots and securely restrain a victim, it’s now time to put the knowledge to practice. A quick trip to the Guildmaster’s office gets them a job. Soko village, a small hamlet just off the main road. It’s much like Huston village, where Suki first tried her hand at kidnapping. It’s a small farming village, with only one store, and an understaffed, underpaid, and largely apathetic guard force. The kind of guard force far more likely to simply pay a ransom quickly and quietly, rather than let word of their failure spread. The folks there haven’t had a major kidnapping in recent memory. Which is mainly due to the guild policy of not hitting the same place twice if it can be helped. Therefore the people of the village were not overly suspicious of outsiders, and greet Jason, posing as a scholar simply passing through, with mild curiosity and stronger indifference. It’s much like Suki’s own initiation. Only this time it’s her waiting up at the secret cave, and she didn’t have Carol shadowing her during her first time. It’s not that she lacks confidence in Jason’s abilities, she’s just knows how easy it is for things to go wrong. Thankfully Jason returns unharmed to the cave, once, twice, and three times. Each time with a tied-up, struggling girl tossed over his should like a sack of produce. On his way back to the fourth time, Jason did have the misfortune to run into a farmer while he was sneaking across a field. The man was rather alarmed to find his cousin tied and gagged over Jason’s shoulder. He would have raised the alarm had Jason’s heavy iron club not knocked him out with a single blow, and left him lying senseless in the middle of his own field. He comes back with two more girls after that. Giving them a total of six and putting them two in above their quota. A good haul. All that is left is the ransom. This is where Suki expects everything to go wrong, for Jason to get nabbed by the guards as he’s dropping off the note, for him to get followed back to the cave, for the sack of ransom money to be full of bricks instead of gold, and for her to wind up, tied up, in jail, again. Against all odds, it doesn’t. Jason drops off the ransom note without a hitch, and no one follows him back to the cave. A sack is left at the specified place at the specified time, and it’s not filled with bricks when Suki sneaks down to collect it. Sure they didn’t manage to capture a cute rookie guard to take back with them this time. But all in all, no one is exactly complaining. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Their next job is even more straightforward. There’s a group of female bandits hiding in the hills near one of the smaller cities, and are preying on the merchants traveling the road. The Kidnapper’s Guild is officially a bounty hunters guild, at least for the parts of its organization that need some kind of a public face. As a result, the guild usually chases after the occasional bounty to keep up appearances. This bounty is just the kind of job the guild loves. To make matters even better, the guard at the bounty office had basically announced that he didn’t care what happened to the bandits themselves, so long as they were stopped from raiding the roads. For most bounty hunters, it was basically a license to kill. For the Kidnapper’s Guild, it was an open opportunity for both fun and profit. The bandits had made their hideout in a hillside cave, with a good view of the main road. There were at least smart enough to have a lookout posted outside. But she didn’t even have time to raise the alarm when Carol snuck up behind her with a chloroformed rag and a coil of rope. With the sentry bound and gagged, and with surprise on their side, it was a simple matter to get the drop on the remaining bandits. Most of the bandits were sitting down for lunch, when Suki and her team burst into the cave. One woman was even in the middle of a bath. It might have been a tough fight if they hadn’t had the element of surprise. As it was, a smoky fireball from Jason was enough to both catch their victims off guard, and allow Suki and her team to subdue them in the confusion. There was, Suki reflected, watching the bandits struggle and curse them through their gags, nothing more satisfying than a job well done. That, of course, was when the leader of the bandits came back late from a raid. Accompanied by what was apparently the other half of the gang, and the leader’s seven foot tall, four hundred pounds, probably eats steroids for breakfast, boyfriend Bubba. It really was team effort which got them through that fight. Jason took care of the remaining bulk of the gang with a combination water blast, lighting bolt, and mass hypnosis spells. Suki and Carol ganged up on the leader herself, taking her down with a mixture of minor magic, poison, and a lot of dirty tricks. Athena used a sudden low blow to take Bubba down to her level, and then proceeded to use that leverage to beat him the rest of the way down. With Bubba out cold on the floor, and the bandit leader glaring at them from behind a blindfold, all that was left to do was to grab some tokens, to prove to the bounty office they had done the deed, and to signal the guild member waiting at the bottom of the hill to come lead the captives away. By anyone’s standards, it was a good day when you got paid twice. Once by the royal bounty office for taking care of the bandits, and twice by the slavers market for providing them with new stock. Suki made a note to keep an eye out for more official bounties like that. _______________________________________________________________________________________ They’re next job is nothing like the other two, not by far. By Suki’s estimation, it might be one of her biggest jobs yet. That short version of things is that the young Lord Medon had, upon assuming his aging father’s title, gone on to push his formerly obscure noble house into the spotlight. Through a combination of luck and business savvy, he had pulled his family back from the brink of financial ruin and was looking to make them one of the richest noble families in the kingdom. With that new wealth had come a surge of new political connections and influence. Now, all of this would have normally been absolutely no concern of the Kidnapper’s Guild whatsoever. Except for the fact that Lord Medon had been using his new influence and wealth to directly oppose the efforts of the guild. He hadn’t yet become anything more than a nuisance. At the moment his greatest crime against the guild had been to push for a tax on rope, and to get one of their suppliers audited. But at the rate Lord Medon was gaining wealth and influence, it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Thus, the Guildmaster had come to the conclusion that the best way to deal with this emerging threat was to take Lord Medon down, and take him down hard. The perfect opportunity had come in the form of a grand gala Lord Medon was hosting at his manor. The gala was planned to be the star of Lord Medon’s efforts, a way to secure even more influence and prestige among the upper circles of society and cement his relations with his business partners. The Guildmaster had thus ordered Suki and her team to infiltrate the gala, and kidnap as many people as possible. The way Jason explained it, his uncle basically had two goals. The first, to send Lord Medon a message not to mess with the Kidnappers Guild. The second, to ruin him utterly. Having his guests kidnapped from his own mansion during an event he was hosting would do irreparable damage to Lord Medon’s carefully cultivated reputation and cripple his standing among both the nobility and his business partners. For a noble, such social damage could hurt far more than even the highest ransom the Guildmaster could demand. To that end, the Guildmaster had drawn heavily upon his own connections to get whatever information on Lord Medon he could. What he discovered was that Lord Medon had recently moved his family out of their decrepit hereditary estate, and into a much larger mansion located closer to the capital. Now, both the Guildmaster and his many predecessors had felt it very useful to maintain blueprints and maps of all the major castles and estates in the kingdom. What the Guildmaster discovered, was that Lord Medon’s new mansion was both very old, and riddled with secret passageways, which as far as he could discover, Lord Medon knew nothing about. Those secret passageways became the basis of the plan. If Lord Medon truly knew nothing of them, then they would be able to use the passages to sneak through the manor and transport their victims out of the mansion’s grounds unseen. It was Jason who came up with the second breakthrough. If they could disguise themselves as guests to the gala, then they wouldn’t need to sneak around the guards, and they could scout the place out with at least some measure of plausible deniability. Details were hammered out over the next week. One of the Guildmaster’s contacts managed to secure Suki an invitation under the name Lady Susanna. Some bribes and nudges secured Athena a job as one of the many temporary guards being employed in anticipation of the event. A decorated carriage and appropriate attire was cobbled together. Thankfully Suki had already been taught much about the kingdom’s nobility and the various noble houses themselves, so a quick review had been all that was needed to give her all the knowledge of pass as a noble lady at the party. Despite this, everything still seems far too rushed when they get into their disguises and board the carriage to Lord Medon’s gala. Suki spends the whole ride to the mansion wondering what will go wrong during the course of the mission. In an attempt to diffuse her worry, she makes the mistake of trying to start an idle conversation about the fruit harvest. Jason latched onto the topic like a ravenous dog after a steak. In three houses both Suki and Carol got an in-depth talk from Jason about the orchards back home, about the latest breakthroughs in branch grafting, about new attempt to breed a cold-tolerant orange tree, and how he thought this was going to be very good year for plums. By the time the carriage pulls of the drive of Lord Medon’s new mansion, both Suki and Carol are suffering from acute information overload. But, it at least stops Suki from worrying, and when the carriage pulls to a stop, she has managed to compose herself enough to greet Lord Medon personally. He doesn’t know her. He doesn’t know half the people who will be showing up. Half the point of the gala is to change that. So, he does nothing but smile, nod, and accepts Suki’s apology about her father being unable to come. Because, he wouldn’t even know who her father was, even if the man hadn’t been completely made up. To their great fortune, they are assigned a room in the east wing. A room with easy access to a large, secret room located just beside the wine cellar under their feet. They couldn’t have asked for better. Since the gala itself is mere hours away, Carol, disguised as Suki’s maid, is dispatched to get in contact with Athena. Jason, acting as Suki’s bodyguard, is sent to scout out the secret passageways and make sure the information they got from his uncle is correct. Carol returns an hour later to say that Athena is still in place to assist them, and has even been assigned to patrol their wing, giving them some more wiggle room in case things go bad. Jason popped out of the wall not long after to confirm that the secret passages were both present and apparently long unused. It was green lights across the board. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Suki made a few last adjustments of her dress, sprayed on a dash of perfume, took a deep breath, and made her way out of the room towards the ballroom. The gala was taking place in three parts. The first was an informal sit-down, where the guests could mingle with each other and enjoy appetizers. The second, a formal diner. Finally, the whole affair would be capped off with a dance. It had been decided to avoid kidnapping anyone until after dinner. The logic behind that decision, being that as dinner was a formal affair, with each guest having their own set place, it would quickly become apparent if anyone was missing. Furthermore, during the dance, it would not only be less suspicious if not everyone was accounted for, but the wine from dinner and the drinks being served would mean more people who were relaxed and less on guard. This also meant that Suki would have to survive through both the sit-down and the dinner without blowing their cover. While this was exactly one of the environments Suki had been trained to navigate since she was a little girl, she still figured the less people she talked to, the less likely it was anyone would notice something out of place about her. Unfortunately, an auburn-haired young noble lady in a dark green dress had taken Suki’s choice of an out of the way window seat as on open invitation for company. “Anita Brightholm,” she said, curtseying in introduction. “I know this is not entirely proper, but I know next to no one here, and it looks like you are in the same boat.” “Susanna Kewsly,” Suki replied, giving her cover name. “You may call me Su if it pleases you.” It was close enough to her real name that she might get away with it. “Only if you call me Ann,” Anita replied. “So, what brings you to this delightful gala tonight?” “Business,” Suki answered. It was technically true after all. “Oh, what kind of business?” “Rope.” It was the first thing that had come to Suki’s mind. “My family is very interested in rope. We were hoping we could petition Lord Medon’s support in overturning that ridiculous rope tax that was just implemented.” “Oh yes, I heard about that. Something about trying to stop kidnappers wasn’t it?” Shit “I don’t know,” Suki brushed off the question. “It’s mostly nonsense anyway.” “Do you think it’s true though?” Ann pressed on. “I mean, do you really think there’s an actual guild of people that makes a living tying up young woman and then ransoming them back to their families. Sounds… horrid. If you ask me.” Suki’s eyebrows shot up, at that moment Ann had sounded just like Carol did, when the topic of bondage got raised. “So, what brings you here?” She asked, hoping Ann would take the hint and change the subject.” “Well, business, of a sort. I’m looking for a husband.” Ann explained. “Well, I’m supposed to at least. See my father recently passed away, and now my uncle is my guardian.” She took a sip of tea. “He’s been pushing me to find a husband for a while, and he’s made no secret it’s because he wants me out of the house.” “Ah… I see…” Most nobles weren’t usually this upfront about things. Most couldn’t afford to be. Ann must be desperate for some kind of ally here. “Truth be told,” Ann continued. “I me and my uncle don’t really get along, so I’m kind of eager to get out of the house myself. Ah… if only there was some handsome slaver to swipe me off my feet and cart me off to his lair.” “What!?” “If only there was a handsome prince to sweep me off my feet and carry me back to his castle,” Ann repeated, as if she had said absolutely nothing out of the usual. Suki just stared. Either Ann was on to her, or she was going to be the only person who would be pleasantly surprised tonight. _______________________________________________________________________________________ The sit-down last on for a few hours, during which Suki and Ann spent most of their time eying potential husbands for Ann and “jokingly” making remarks about which women in attendance were more likely to get nabbed by kidnappers and why. Dinner, in Suki’s opinion, dragged on far too long. While the food was excellent, Lord Medon insisted on giving a speech after every course. This dragged the meal out far long than was proper, and by the end Suki was about ready to beat the man on the head with Jason’s iron club just to get him to shut up. Finally, the dinner ends. The guests filter out of the banquet room and into the ballroom. It’s time, Suki finds a cute looking maid, and casually remarks that she’s left her scarf in her room and asks the maid to fetch it for her. The maid curtseys and immediately heads off. What she doesn’t know, is that she’s the signal to Jason and Carol that the dinner was over and it was time to get to work. Already Suki is plotting ways to quietly slip out of the dance and join them. Except at that moment Ann homes in on her, and attaches herself to Suki’s side. For whatever reason, she is determined that her new friend will enjoy herself. Suddenly Suki finds herself with a steady stream of young men who want to dance with her and Ann. All she gets in way of explanation is a cheery smile from Ann, and a remark to the effect that if she’s already searching for a husband she might as well try to find one for Suki while she’s at it. If her life had gone differently, Suki would have appreciated the sentiment. As it was, all she can feel is annoyance. Thankfully the young men back off a bit when one of them “accidently” grabs Suki’s ass, and she “accidently” knees him in the groin on reflex. But even then, there is still enough attention on her that she knows she can’t slip out without attracting notice. Jason, Carol, and Athena are going to be alone on this one. But, as far as she can tell, they’re still hard at work regardless. From the perspective of the party goers, at first nothing seems amiss. At most all that people noticed was that the serving maid with the wine was taking a long time refilling her tray, or that Lady Songsorn was taking a rather long stroll in the gardens. Even after minutes turn into hours, folks started getting annoyed instead of worried. As she sits down for a break between dances, Suki notices Lord Medon talking angrily to a butler, and the man then storm off. No doubt to find the missing serving staff, who he likely thinks are taking an extended break. Of course, when the butler returns nearly a half-hour later, he doesn’t look mad, he looks worried. “I have the guards looking.” Suki hears him say to Lord Medon. “We can’t find them anywhere. Some of the kitchen maids went out on breaks and are now missing too.” The guests are also starting to notice something is wrong as well. The number of young ladies who have stepped out of the ballroom for a quick moment, and have yet to come back, has steadily grown. Suki can see orders being whispered to attendants to go find various people and bring them back to the ballroom. Of course the worry can only grow when not only do the attendants fail to find the people they were sent to fetch, but sometimes the attendants themselves go missing. “I’ve heard its kidnappers,” Ann whispers to Suki, with more excitement than is probably sensible. “I hear they’re really angry at Lord Medon cause of that rope tax and want revenge.” The worry hangs over the gala like a miasma. Everyone knows something is up, but they’re trying their hardest not to let their worry show. No one is making any obvious moves, they’re all just waiting for something to happen. Then something does happen. Lord Medon’s butler bursts through the double doors leading to the garden, a semi-conscious young lord supported on his shoulders. There’s a small trail of blood trickling down from his face from under his hair. It’s like a switch being flipped. Someone screams, one lady faints, along with two gentlemen, heads of households begin barking orders to their servants, and everyone crowds around the butler and the young lord, all asking the same question. “What happened!?” “I… don’t know,” the young man admits. “I remember going for a walk in the gardens with Lady Cassandra and Lady Rebecca. I had made a joke about something, I can’t remember what. Then… someone hit me in the head from behind, I think. That’s the only explanation I can come up with. Next thing I know John here is pulling me out of a rosebush, and my head hurts. I… don’t even know what happened to Lady Cassandra or Lady Rebecca. Gods, they were just gone when John pulled me out of the bush. No signs of them anywhere.” “Now is the time to get out of here,” Suki thinks, her eyes darting around looking for an escape route. She needs to join back up with Carol and the others and start moving the hostages they’ve caught out of here. At least now in all this panic in confusion, there is nothing suspicious about her actions. The only problem is that Ann, standing beside her, has been joined by a gaggle of other young noble ladies. Suki doesn’t know any of them, and they are likely only here due to the base human instinct that says that in a crisis, a group is better than being alone. But Suki either needs an excuse to get away from them, or a reason to get them to follow her. Good business practice and all that. Then out of the corner of her eye she notices a guard in armor coming towards them. “Excuse me Ladies.” Even though the helmet’s visor is down, Suki’s heart picks up to hear Athena’s voice. “But there’s been a security breach. I’ve been asked to escort you to safety.” It’s almost too easy. The noblewoman flock around Athena for the safety her position and gender supposedly provides. Even if the stereotype is no longer true, most folks still have a very hard time imagining a woman as a kidnapper. In this case, it works to the advantage of Suki and her team. The group of them follow Athena out of the ballroom, and down several corridors to the east wing. There they entered what was apparently an unused storage room, where Athena pressed a brick in the wall, and a section of stone swung open. “Inside,” Athena ordered. “This is a secret hideaway. You should be safe in here.” The girls nervously filed through the narrow doorway, down a flight of stone stairs, and into a small stone chamber. “This… looks like a dungeon,” one of the noblewomen remarked, laughing nervously. “I think it was at one point.” Every head in the room snapped over to the darkened corner where the voice had some from. Jason stepped out of the shadows. He was wearing a cloak, and had the hood pulled up to hide his face. “The Kidnapper’s guild sends their regards to Lord Medon.” Jason continued. “Thanks for bringing them here Minerva.” Minerva being Athena’s cover name for the mission. The entire group, which one sole exception, turned around in shock. That was all the opportunity needed. Carol leapt from another shadowy corner and snapped the nearest girl into an armlock, pressing a chloroform soaked rag to her mouth. Athena grabbed a coil of rope from her belt and went after another girl. Jason’s hands glowed white for a split second, before a bright burst of light and a sleep spell made three other girls collapse in a heap. Suki meanwhile grabbed a handkerchief, soaked it with a quick spray of chloroform disguised as a perfume bottle, and got Ann from behind, as the other girl tried to decide whether she should run or stay. It was all over in minutes. Five girls, all bound, gagged, and blindfolded. Not bad. “Here, put this on quick!” Jason whispered handing her a cloak. “If we do this right, no one has to know any of us were kidnappers!” Of course, let them think that Lady Susanna was kidnapped along with everyone else! One less lead for the guards to chase. “We should get out of here,” she stated, trying to shift her voice so no one recognized it. “They found the man you hid in the rosebushes.” “Minerva said as much,” Jason replied, grabbing the unconscious Ann and hoisting her over his shoulders. “Come on, I’ve been stashing everyone in the secret cellar by the east wing. It’s this way.” They followed Jason down the corridor, each one of them carrying a hostage. The passageways were narrow, dark, and maze-like, but Jason seemed to know where he was going, taking right and left turns without even stopping. Then they turned the corner, and Suki was rendered speechless. Sure, she knew the lot of them had managed to nab quiet a number of people. But it was one thing seeing them disappear from the ball, and it was another to see them sitting in the room all tied up together. There was over thirty people at the very least. A little over half of them were wearing the uniforms of servants, the other half were dressed in expensive gowns and dresses. There were even three women wearing guard uniforms, and who were glaring balefully at Athena. Noble and commoner alike, equally bound and helpless. If Suki had been in any way inclined, she could have found something poetic about the whole situation. As it is, she finds herself wondering about something else. “How are we going to get all them out of the mansion without getting caught?” “There’s a passage out of this room that leads to a cave outside the mansion grounds.” Jason replied. “Leroy and some other guildsmen are waiting there with carriages filled with crates and boxes.” “I know that!” Suki snapped. “What I mean is how are we going to get everyone from here, down the tunnel, and to the carriages before someone discovers this room!?” Jason froze, his face showing clearly that he hadn’t thought about that part. Suki glanced back at Carol and Athena. The looks on their face told the same story. She took a deep breath, and resisted the urge to bang their heads against the wall. In the end, they had to carry the girls down the passage one by one, all by themselves. Even though Jason had jammed the secret door shut with a piece of wood and a spell, every trip was fraught with the worry that they would get back to find that the guards had discovered them and they would have to split and leave half the hostages behind. But it doesn’t happen, even though the whole process takes over an hour, and they each have to make over a dozen trips back and forth. The only incident of note is Ann suddenly regaining consciousness, spitting out her gag, and asking Jason if he’s single. Leroy is no help at all. While the other guildsmen were at least busy securing the hostages in the backs of the wagons, he just sits around watching them work with a pleased smile on his face. Supervising, is what he calls it. They’re still ticked off at him regardless. But even they can’t stay mad as the last captive is loaded into the wagons, the guildsmen reseal the secret passage, and ready the horses. Then they are off, racing towards the hideout with their bound cargo, laughing into the night. _______________________________________________________________________________________ There is almost no one who is happy about what happened the night of Lord Medon’s gala. Nearly all the noble families in the kingdom end up having to pay a ransom to the Kidnapper’s guild in order to get their wives, daughters, nieces, cousins, lovers, friends and/or servants back. The only exception is Lord Brightholm, Ann’s uncle, who instead gives the guild a letter saying in effect, that as far as he cared the guild could keep his niece till hell froze over. Suki got the impression however, that Ann wasn’t exactly upset by this. True to predictions Lord Medon is practically ruined. No one who attended his party is happy, either because they were kidnapped, clubbed on the head, or forced to pay a large ransom to a criminal guild. There is not a single person who does not blame Lord Medon in some way for what happened. Either he was negligent in the security of his guests, shouldn’t have pissed off the damn kidnapper’s guild, or was in league with them himself and got a cut of all the ransoms. Even the fact that the man practically went broke helping to pay off ransoms for his kidnapped guests, in an attempt to salvage his reputation, did nothing to damper the intensity with which the last rumor spread. What was supposed to be the crowning achievement of all his efforts, had become a damning incident which he cannot live down. On the contrast, the Kidnapper’s Guild couldn’t be happier. Sure, everyone knows they did it. Everyone would know they did it, even if there was absolutely no evidence as to who had done it. They will have to lay low for a while, stick to legal bounties until the heat dies. But with the amount of money they’ve made, they could also just laze about Headquarters just as easily. This more than anything, demands a celebration. And boy, do they celebrate. For three whole days straight in fact. When it’s all over, Suki will crawl out from under a table in the living quarters, completely naked, followed by an equally naked Carol. Jason will be unable to look at Athena without bursting into laughter. There will be a guildsman’s underwear hanging from the ceiling, made worse by the fact that the guildsmen is still wearing them. Leroy will be nursing both a massive hangover and a pulled groin. And finally, Ann will be tied up in a long-term cell, learning how to write a fuck-you letter to her uncle, with only her feet. When Suki emerges from her room, finally clothed and less hungover, she'll find the Guildmaster standing in the middle of the mess that is the living quarters. He’ll watch the various members of his guild groan in agony as they come to awareness of the hangovers, he’ll watch a bottle roll across the floor and come to a stop under his boot. Then he’ll look at her. “You did a good job. You’ve earned it.” Category:Fanfiction